Thomas Reed, whose childhood story of a UFO encounter was accepted by the Great Barrington Historical Society, says media organizations have exaggerated his account.

Whatever you do, Thomas Reed says, do not call it an abduction.

Reed’s account of his family’s 1969 encounter with a UFO in Sheffield made headlines last year when it boldly went where few tales of alien sightings have gone before: into the historical record books. The Great Barrington Historical Society formally inducted the story in February 2015, describing it as “significant and true” after reviewing contemporaneous news coverage, witness statements and polygraph results.

A group of local supporters erected a $5,000 monument to Sheffield’s brush with the unknown last August, making 2015 a banner year for Reed’s long struggle to legitimize his account.

But not all has gone well since then, Reed said.

In September, just weeks after the monument’s dedication, a still-unidentified vandal took a can of spraypaint to the monument, Sheffield Police Chief Eric Munson said in a phone interview.

“Just strictly graffiti. No words,” Munson said. “There was some controversy in town when it got put up, so it could have been somebody there. It could have been some kids trying to make their mark on it.”

Local residents were surprised by the size of the structure, a large white granite brick which features a plaque touting “the official induction of our nation’s first off-world/UFO incident.” Not everyone was happy with the monument, which was privately funded but appears in a prominent location near the Sheffield Bridge, Reed said.

“That part of it created a little bit of a bad taste in some people’s mouths,” he said. “Or it could have been that somebody took offense to the topic. But nobody really knows why it got vandalized.”

A group of about 40 people attended the dedication of a 5,000-pound granite monument near the site of a reported 1969 UFO sighting in the Berkshires town of Sheffield.

But worse than the physical damage is the sensationalism, according to Reed. He has appeared on a number of alien-baiting cable reality shows — all of which, from “Paranormal Paparazzi” to “Alien Mysteries,” promised to take his story seriously before exaggerating it on-air, Reed said. And the mainstream press has been little better, according to Reed, describing his accounts as “abductions” — a word he swears he never uses.

“The papers and the stories have gotten so ridiculous that the truth has been lost,” Reed said. “First of all, they keep using the cornball terminology you might find –- the abduction stuff. That’s not what happened. Our family is very credible. We’re not a bunch of lunatics.”

Here is the truth, as he tells it:

Reed and his family were driving from Ski Butternut in Great Barrington over the Sheffield Bridge when they noticed a bright, floating object near their car. They felt what Reed describes as a change in pressure, or an electromagnetic field; a dead silence fell, the light grew brighter, and they found themselves somewhere else.

“Now, we do remember being in what looked like an airplane hanger,” Reed said. “We didn’t stay in the car. We were removed from the vehicle, that’s true. Where we were, I don’t know.”

Reed had also told of encounters with UFOs that took place in previous years, but the 1969 incident coincided with widespread eyewitness reports of a glowing, flying object in Sheffield, according to the Boston Globe.

Reed is now taking action to fix both the physical vandalism of the monument and sensationalism of his family’s story. The monument will be refaced and a solar light and bench will be installed in the coming weeks, he said.

And on Oct 22, Reed will appear at Ski Butternut with fellow UFO advocate Travis Walton, SyFy television host Ben Hansen and the owner of the “Starchild skull” — a deformed skull which some paranormal enthusiasts say is alien in origin.

Reed eventually left Sheffield, before moving to Florida and starting a modeling agency that saw him provide extras for films like “2 Fast 2 Furious” and “Miami Vice.” At the event he hopes to walk back the exaggerations, like those in his episode of “Uncovering Aliens” — a reality show which turned Reed’s ambiguous experience into a tale of alien medical experimentation.

“I was told that it would be factual and it would be this, that and the other thing. Next thing I know they’ve blown it out of proportion,” Reed said. “We were promised it would be a bio type film. It was anything but. It was so ridiculous.”